‘What?’ Rowe’s eyes darted up to meet her sister’s, allowing her hair to fall back and reveal her face. Most people would recoil from the ugly scars that marred her once perfect features, but Sloane never noticed them. She only saw Rowe’s kind and gentle soul behind her bright green eyes. Despite the scars, Sloane saw much more beauty in Rowe than in her own unflawed reflection.
‘Our brother has always been a bit impulsive and he’s headstrong as hell, but he’s not stupid. Something bad must have happened for him and his team to be gone without a trace. It was only pure luck that I overheard one of the crew talking about it.’ Sloane shook her head again. ‘The Captain should have told us.’
‘I’m sure there’s a reason we weren’t told.’ Rowe spoke softly, as though her words alone could inflict pain by merely being said too loud.
Sloane’s eyes hardened and she stared out the small window and into the dark chasm of space beyond. They’d been staring at that same view for months since they’d left Earth, and the sight of it turned her stomach. She knew perfectly well the reason she wasn’t told. The Captain despised her, but she couldn’t say that aloud. It would only upset Rowe, who was clearly already struggling with Ash’s disappearance and Sloane’s imminent departure.
Sloane wished she could see some fight in her sister’s eyes, but it was like she had already accepted Ash’s fate. He may not have been around much when they were younger, but their older brother adored Rowe and always went out of his way to look after her.
Sloane didn’t have the same relationship with Ash—their interactions were always civil at best. They butted heads on everything and saw the world in very different shades of black and white.
He was her brother though, Rowe needed him, and Sloane was his best chance at being found. There was no way she was leaving that up to the first response team. Those guys were a pack of morons. She’d seen them training on the trip out here and couldn’t understand how they’d even been picked for this mission. The fact she’d taken the space suit she wore with such ease only proved it.
Rowe’s eyes dropped to the floor again. ‘So, you’re leaving.’
She nodded, sharing her sister’s unease. There was no way she could protect her once she was gone and she didn’t trust the Captain to look out for her either. Rowe was just so fragile, and it felt wrong to leave her behind. But finding Ash was more important right now, and Rowe would last a few days without her.
‘The team they’re sending have other tasks aside from the missing team. I’m not even certain they’re looking for him, so I have to go. Ash would do the same for either of us.’
‘You’re right,’ Rowe said, her shoulders slouching with begrudging acceptance. ‘What should I tell Father?’
The sound of his name caused the hairs on Sloane’s neck to rise. It invoked images of blood, death and torment. ‘Tell the Captain nothing.’ Her teeth ground out his name. ‘It’s better if he doesn’t know I’m gone until we’ve landed on Aeris. By then, he won’t be able to stop me.’
Rowe rolled her eyes. ‘You really need to stop calling him that. He can be trusted you know.’
‘Our mother trusted him and look where that led her,’ Sloane fired back.
Rowe raised one eyebrow at her. ‘Fine, I won’t tell him, but you know he’ll find out soon enough.’
‘Not soon enough to stop me.’
‘Five minutes until launch,’ a voice announced over the speaker.
‘Time to go.’ Sloane pulled her sister into a rough hug. ‘Be safe Rowe,’ she whispered into her hair, before leaving without another word. She was never good at goodbyes.
Getting onto the drop pod was easy. The highly reflective helmet masked Sloane’s features and being outfitted in the space suit meant she was ushered on board with no questions asked.
‘Cutting it a bit fine, aren’t we?’ the Commander said, as the two-minute launch warning was announced, and she moved past him to find her seat. She merely grunted in response, not daring to utter a word. She’d known the Commander for years, and though he was old, his eyes were keen and his mind was quick. Sloane had a bad reputation for being reckless, and she had a feeling her presence here was only going to add to it.
Many things tumbled through Sloane’s mind as she strapped herself in. What would happen when they found she’d snuck onto the drop pod? Would they try to send her back when they landed? Would she even have a chance to search for Ash? But, her largest concern was Rowe.
The girl was like a small, broken bird and she couldn’t stand leaving her behind. Not when she knew the things she’d been through. Sloane was one of the few people Rowe allowed near her, and it rankled her knowing she’d left her aboard a ship of strangers. The girl was afraid of her own damn shadow and, with both her and Ash gone, she was going to struggle more than she had in years.
She didn’t have a choice though. She needed to find Ash and didn’t trust the men aboard this pod to do the job without her. None of them had the same tracking skills she had, and they were more than likely to fall into the same problems as her idiot brother and his team.
The drop pod began to disembark from the ship and Sloane gripped her hands tightly to the armrests as it began to free-fall. She was strapped to a chair, in a stolen space suit, plummeting towards a foreign planet with absolutely no preparation for the mission. What could go wrong?
Like the gravitational pull that dragged the landing pod downwards, spiralling towards the green planet, Aeris, Sloane’s thoughts were uncontrollably drawn to the man who should be sitting there in her place. Was he okay? Had she killed him? Despite what she’d trained for, she’d never actually killed a person before. She’d never had the chance.
The Academy had shut its doors when another world war had broken out, and the Captain had forced Ash, Rowe and herself aboard the Explorer before she could issue a word of complaint. Ash was practically frothing at the opportunity and Rowe was simply pleased to be with her family. Sloane was pissed and so foul tempered that everyone aboard the Explorer, but Rowe, had gone out of their way to avoid her for the first leg of their journey. She hadn’t trained all those years to become a useless addition to a space exploration mission, and that’s all the Captain saw her as.
The pod rattled violently, effectively snapping Sloane out of her melancholy. Well, sort of. She still struggled to put her mind at ease over the man she had left behind. She’d done everything she could at the time to make sure he would be okay. Still, no one wants to be thrown unceremoniously into cryostatus, do they? And there was no way to know if she’d even done it right, she was hardly an expert. Hell, she wasn’t even a novice.
She probably shouldn’t have done it, but she’d been acting on instinct at the time. She’d just overheard him telling another crewmate about the missing team down on Aeris, so she’d followed him and cornered him once he was alone. The guy was her way onto the mission, so she didn’t regret it. Her only regret was that another method to silence him hadn’t been available to her at the time.
She unhappily shivered and tried to forget the ice that consumed the man and focus on the present. There were twelve men in the landing pod with her: the first response team. Sloane was lucky number thirteen and she was a part of this team to find her brother, whether the Captain liked it or not.
It had only been minutes since the landing pod disembarked from the ship, yet Sloane felt like she had been sitting there for over an hour. It was her first time in one of the landing pods and she was surprised by how sparse the interior was. The crew were all strapped in a circular formation looking out at the bare walls of the pod.
Each seat had its own clear glass monitor, though Sloane doubted she’d have much need for hers. The one upside to Sloane’s position was the perfect view she had out of the small window on the pod. At the moment, all she could see were stars, and she’d seen enough of them over the last month to last a lifetime. But, right now, they felt like a small glimpse of freedom.
None of the others were
aware they were one man short and they definitely wouldn’t have disembarked if they’d realised they had the Capitan’s daughter aboard. Her space suit was a more than adequate mask for her identity though. As long as she didn’t say a word into the microphone that was linked to the other suits, they’d never know it was her white blonde hair and deadly green eyes behind the highly reflective visor.
Even if they did realise, it was too late to turn back. Sloane smiled into her helmet. She’d made it onto the mission and she refused to feel remorse for any fallout that occurred because of it.
She hoped the Captain wouldn’t find out for a while, and she could find her brother before she was dragged back to the ship. That was, if he was still alive. She swallowed and tried not to think of that possibility.
She had overheard that three days had passed since the last communication between her brother’s team and the Explorer. The planet was supposed to be uninhabited, so there was most likely some sort of interference causing their lack of contact. In all likelihood they’d get down there and find her brother’s team were completely fine, but she had to know for sure.
The landing pod shook harder as it began to enter the foreign planet's atmosphere and Sloane’s face dropped. She clenched her teeth and squinted her eyes shut as her body tried to meld itself into the seat behind her. Sweat poured down the back of her neck and her heart felt like it was going into overdrive. The whole metal shuttle squealed loudly as the crew of thirteen plummeted faster.
‘This is it boys,’ one of the men said. The others laughed as though they were about to hop on a rollercoaster, not fall from the sky to land on some unknown planet.
Sloane opened her eyes to look outside the small square window. Condensation lined the inside of the glass and outside was a wall of fire. The deep orange and gold flames ate at the pod hungrily, and she took a deep breath and closed her eyes again to try and fight the nausea building inside. She hated everything about space, and this experience only made her despise it more.
‘Can someone get the stewardess to bring me a whisky,’ one of the other men joked. Sloane could hear he said it through gritted teeth. It made her glad to know she wasn’t the only one suffering, but she wished they’d shut up all the same. The men who flew aboard the Explorer were cocky jackasses and the first response team were the worst of the lot. Sloane didn’t have time for them on the ship and she had even less time for them now she was stuck in the tiny capsule of doom with them.
The pod shuddered violently and Sloane’s teeth grinded together harder. She would never show any outward evidence of pain, but her chest hurt like crazy and it had become increasingly uncomfortable to breathe. It was like she couldn’t inflate her lungs anymore, and she felt like she’d left her bellybutton somewhere back on the Explorer.
Sloane looked at the monitor in front of her. Her vision had begun to blur and everything was now smudged across the screen. It looked as though one of the engines was lit up red on the display, but that couldn’t be right. These landing pods were sturdy and she was pretty certain she’d never heard of them having mechanical problems. She ignored the display and closed her eyes again.
A low groaning sound resonated through the walls of the pod, only to be cut off by a loud and ominous bang. ‘Shit!’ someone swore.
Sloane’s eyes whipped open and she tried to look over to the voice, but the way she was strapped to the chair limited her movement and she couldn’t even move her arms anymore. She glanced at the display again and the red blur on the screen, which she was nearly certain was the engine.
‘Damn it!’ he swore again. This time she could hear it was the Commander.
‘What’s wrong?’ someone grunted.
‘Engine, I think. We’re burning too much fuel and we won’t have enough power to break. Perry, what’s happening?’
No one answered the Commander’s question. The edges of Sloane’s vision were beginning to darken and the pressure against her chest was only getting more intense. She’d never had the proper training to land in one of these pods. She’d only ever being in one of the transport shuttles where you barely felt the G’s. Her chest was burning and it was beginning to feel like someone was attempting to rip it open.
She gave the tiniest grunt in pain, but no one would have heard it over the loud rattling that had taken over the small pod. It sounded like the walls were being pounded by sledgehammers, which really wasn’t promising.
‘Perry?’ the Commander yelled again. Sloane hoped that Perry hadn’t passed out. She felt like she was close enough to it herself. The darkness in her vision was closing in.
‘PERRY!’ the Commander roared.
Sloane had a sudden bad feeling. Why wasn’t Perry answering?
She could feel herself slowly losing consciousness. She’d be gone at any second. With her last ounce of strength, she looked down at her chest. The Explorer logo that was emblazoned across the top right hand corner of her suit was blurry as hell, but it was there. It was what was below it that made her darkly laugh under her struggled breath as she lost her battle to stay awake.
Her space suit belonged to Perry.
IN ICE WE BURN is available now!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is with mixed feelings that I write these acknowledgements. The ARC Series has been a three-year endeavour for me, and I still can’t quite believe the journey has come to an end. I am sad to be saying goodbye to these characters, who I’ve spent so much time with these last few years, but I’m glad their stories finally have closure.
These books wouldn’t have been the same without my amazing editor, Pete, who constantly drives me to be a better writer. His ability to pack more excitement into scenes has helped to develop this series into what it is today. He has worked tirelessly on the series, and I am so grateful for his input.
My family and friends have been my biggest cheerleaders and their support means everything to me. Thank you to Mum, Dad, Hen and Jen: your enthusiasm for my work gives me the courage to share it with the world. You guys are the most amazing people and I feel so blessed to have you in my life.
Finally, to everyone who has read and loved the ARC series: you have brought it to life, and I couldn’t have done it without you. You guys are why I love to write and you make me excited to work every day. I look forward to hearing your reactions to how the series has ended.
The ARC Series may be over, but I have so many exciting new projects in the works and I hope you will enjoy them as well!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALEXANDRA MOODY is an Australian author. She studied Law and Commerce in her hometown, Adelaide, before going on to spend several years living abroad in Canada and the UK. She is a serious dog-lover, double-black-diamond snowboarder and has a love/hate relationship with the gym. She can often be found on Twitter and Facebook, or you can visit her website at alexandramoody.com for further details on upcoming projects.
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